Aurelius Legion Captain - Improved

After I did my original post on this guy, I looked at him again and said to myself, there are a few obvious things I can improve on. Firstly I wanted to improve the shading on the underside of the shoulder pads in line with Ron's suggestion at 'From the Warp'. The second big thing was to improve the scrolls, which I did with a micron pen and it came out way better. I also did a few highlights on the banner in red and painted in the armour joints on the arms in metal effect. Overall these few small things made a big improvement to the model.

Here is the old picture above and new picture below for comparison.

What do you think of the improvements?

Vitor

Happy New Year and the Obligatory Resolutions

First off Happy New year to everyone !! I hope it will be a better year for all of us.

So on to the resolutions, as you can tell from the picture above I think they are easy to make but hard to keep. How many of us have wanted to start new armies in January only to give up by March? I know I have wanted to keep my motivation going earlier this year and that was the main reason for starting this blog six months ago now.

This year I have a few things I want to pursue more :

Commissions - I sold off my Mephiston conversion earlier and I would like to open my self up to taking on commissions. So if you are interested let me know!!!

Terrain !!! I really love making terrain and this year I made a few nice pieces that I wanted to share in a tutorial but have done nothing about it.

Badab War Minotaurs - I put them on hold as I heard earlier in the year that Forge World were making some bits and so they did. I have some shoulder pads on order so when they arrive I will be starting off an army with a tactical squad.

Conversions / Kitbashes - I have a desire to build some more conversions / kitbashes and the Minotaurs have some cool Characters to start with and I want to do some more Blood Angels (my Aurelius Legion Chapter plays with Blood Angels Rules), a new Mephiston, Astotath and some Sanguinary Priests. If I have the time I want to try out a Primarch or two.


So that's my to do list for the first week in January :) see photo


 Hope you all have a great 2012

Vitor

Aurelius Legion - Rhino - Finished

This is it, the final part of painting and weathering my own Space Marine Chapter Rhino. In the last post I completed the bottom section of the Rhino, now it was time to tackle the top section.

I liberally applied the weathering pigment to all the recessed areas where dust and dirt would accumulate. (apologies for the poor close up pictures).

  

  

 

As you can see  I found it quite difficult to be neat about applying this stuff. I knew from the lower section that a lot of the pigment was going to be wiped off later so it was not such a big deal.

 

 

Now it was time to take my hard stippling brush and remove as much of the pigment as possible. I also used a cloth to wipe away whatever the brush could not get to. I did not use the alcohol to set the pigment as I did not want a repeat of the white frosting situation I encountered on the lower section.

Here are some pictures of the completed model. All in all it came out pretty well. I really like the dusty look of the pigments on the model. One thing to note is that light pigments applied on a light colour that is shaded with a darker colour do not work well (gibberish!!!!!) What I mean is that I found the pigment negated the brown wash I applied to the recesses of my yellow areas on the model.

 

 

Hope you like the way it came out and I recommend everyone have a go at this.

Vitor.

Aurelius Legion - Rhino - On the Painting Table - Part Three

This is where I got to before going on to my experiment with pigments or weathering powders. I ordered some Secret Weapon Pigments and decided to start on the underside and tracks of the Rhino in case things didn't go well, then I would not have to re-paint the whole thing. I must say that I initially got interested in pigments from reading Ron at From the Warp series on the subject, so check his out if you haven't already.

So first off I started to apply the pigment to the underside and came across my first problem, after a couple of dips in the pigment with your brush it flares out and is useless for detailed application. I grabbed my pretty beat up old brush, almost tank brush size, and just got the stuff on there hoping that it would clean up in later stages.

As you can see it was a mess, my next lesson learned was that this stuff is messy!! so make sure you are working on a large sheet of paper to collect all the excess as you can just pour it back into the pot to reuse. Don't touch your face with this stuff on your hands :)

Next step was to take a stiff brush and wipe away all that excess.

As you can see a fair amount was removed with the brush. The next step was to set the pigment with alcohol. I used a local alcohol and applied it liberally.

It worked really well in setting the pigment, in fact it was quite sticky until it dried so be careful not to touch it. The alcohol also, as I was hoping, did tone down the whole effect. The next stage was to then proceed with the bottom of the vehicle and work my way up to the top. I used my large used brush to add pigment to the lower portions around the tracks and the rear and front in a slightly more controlled manner.

 

The alcohol did its job as expected but with one very strange result, it turned white??? like the frosting you get when spraying a mini with sealant. I think it must be the brand or type of alcohol I am using as this problem does not seem to plague others.Well what to do now?? I pulled out my Black Wash and gave the area a good coverage to see if that would help.

The wash did help a lot, thank goodness. The pictures don't show it as clearly but it removed the frosting look and didn't cover up to much of the pigment.See below for some close ups.

 So far the experiment is teaching me loads and is kind of going in the right direction. So last but not least the rest of the Rhino will be done in the next post.

Vitor.

Aurelius Legion - Rhino - On the Painting - Table Part Two

Managed to get all the painting done on my Rhino but didn't remember to take pictures of the stages duhh! The next phase was to add battle damage and some wear and tear etc. In the above picture you can already see the metal highlighting on the extreme edges of the Rhino.

I added some mud effect by applying paint with a small piece of sponge very lightly to the underside and track areas of the Rhino.

I then went back and did the same again but this time with Boltgun Metal to simulate new scratches etc.

Now all that is left is to try out my newly received pigments!! Stay tuned for the next part.

Vitor

Aurelius Legion - Rhino - On the Painting Table

My poor Tactical Marines finally got a transport to ride around in. I intend to use this for gaming so didn't bother with the inside of the Rhino when assembling it, the only part that is removable is the Stormbolter on the hatch.

Here I have just started laying down the base colours of my Chapter, very messy at the moment.

More progress to follow soon.

Vitor

Blood Angels - Sanguinary Guard

When these came out I was amazed by the GW paint job and the models themselves looked awesome! I had to have some, just to paint up if nothing else. When I got my hands on them I was even more amazed at just how detailed they are. I was really looking forward to painting up the detail on the models, all the gems, body armour, shoulder pads and that banner! The only thing I didn't like was the wings so I decided to leave them off on mine.

So off I went and then my enthusiasm was curtailed sharply when I hit my first hurdle which was the gold! I thought I had a fool proof recipe for great looking gold - Tin Bitz base followed by dry brushing highlights of Dwarf Bronze then Shining Gold - it didn't work at all, the lovely detail on the models looked awful! I had to go back and paint in the gold layering style, leaving the previous colour showing in the recesses followed up by lots of washes. That done I thought my problems were over and I could now enjoy painting these guys, wrong!! I started the gems and I struggled to get that 3 layered look on such small sharp edges. I ended up messing on  the gold so many times it defies words. I got so frustrated that I ended up just using a Red Ink wash over them to give them that shiny look and moved on. I then thought well I might try a power effect on the weapons as I usually go for the metal look on weapons, I saw a great little tutorial on the look I wanted and tried to follow it, I think it working only reasonably well. I think my state of mind was shot with these guys. I left the banner for last hoping it would be the turning point and up till the gems and scroll it was.

Any good things to say about my experience you might wonder. I learned a lot of things about my painting and hopefully it improved my skills. The angel on the banner came out really well, the shoulder pads did as well. The final gold look also ended up OK. One or two of the power weapons came out the way I wanted them to.  So all in all not to bad.

The final thing I can say about this kit is - the best use I got out of them is the ability to kit bash there bits, they have to be one of the best kits for that job, I have seen them nigh everywhere.

So enjoy the rest of the pictures.

Vitor